Going Back to Get Away
by Apathyisdeath
Summary: Alex left 2008 again, and has one place to turn; another life. But is that as easy as she thinks, with time moving on 15 years without her in 1982? So that's...1997? That's a long time without her. Pemanent? hiatus.
1. After Everything Has Changed

_A/N: Hello, there! You may well know that I've cancelled one of my chapter-by-chapter fan fiction, called "The Wonderful Wizard of Fenchurch East". I was never really fond of it so I decided to get rid of it because I had no new ideas developing. So, here's a completely new story to replace it! A sort of a Back to the Past kind of affair. But not the past we know of, perhaps? Anyway, this one's going to be reasonably short for me (didn't want to ramble on *ahem*) so it just gives you the general idea. The next few chapters will be quite long so I'm going to bore you with my drabble-ing skills. Lotsa detail. Anyway, here we go!_

**Chapter One**

Alex Drake had woken up. She had finally woken up in 2008; back where she belonged. Or where she thought she did. But what good is belonging when you're not even sure what your world is anymore? She thought she had known what her world was. Molly through and through. Her one and only daughter. Alex had fought to get back to her despite how crazy it made her seem. But now she didn't feel right in the 21st century. And that made her feel guilty.

Now she was running. Looking far crazier than she had ever looked in her 80s Dystopia. She was running through London; not with any aim. People shouted at her as she ran into them and some even tried to stop her. Alex tried to think. What exactly was happening? She had heard voices...through other voices? No, no. It was like when you wake up after someone you love has just died and for the tiniest moment you think they're still alive. Until you remember. She had heard Gene. Shouting at her to wake up. Begging her almost. He had shot her. He hadn't meant to! It was a mistake. Everything was. People were still shouting at her, jeering. And why should they not? It was rush hour on a busy Monday afternoon and the city of London had a bandaged and hospital-gowned woman running through its streets sobbing like a lunatic. Alex didn't care at all though. She just wanted to go home. Home. She knew where it was now.

She was trying to claw her way through London, as if the city would rip itself in half just to let her past. Alex needed to get away from the noise of this place. This year, this bad dream. The traffic hurt her ears. She stopped and held her head. It was horrible.

"_Help me!_" she begged someone. She didn't know who. Someone was shouting at her. They sounded troubled. _Oh shut up_, Alex thought.

"Someone stop her before she gets herself killed!" A passer-by shouted.

"What the hell is she playing at?" Another yelled.

"_MUM!_" A tiny voice screamed, no match for the noises that flooded the area.

But it was too late. Alex didn't notice. She breathed in sharply and the whole world seemed to follow. Retreating into her mind, her thoughts. She had been thrown down onto the pavement by something fast, she didn't know what. But she felt herself rolling over onto her stomach and saw a last glance of her daughter, a nurse's arm tightly encircling her and tears streaming down the little girls face. Her name. She couldn't remember her name.

A just like a light being switched off, everything went dark.


	2. Do You Remember That?

_A/N: Thanks if you reviewed or enjoyed the first chapter. So here we go with the second instalment. Not as long as I hoped, but I am very tired! I'll keep editing around with this a bit, I'm not at all satisfied._

**Chapter Two **

"Come with me. These people here, they don't need you. Dust and cobwebs will soon cover a forgotten women and a forgotten legacy. Believe me, it's true. By this time in 20 years, you'll be gone. Just some loner's faded memory. Come on, come with me, Bolls."

"Bolls?" Alex repeated in a whisper.

Someone was prodding her awake. _Get off me_, she wanted to murmur. _Let me sleep_. But her eyes felt they were being forced open and Alex awakened to a dark room. It was so dark she couldn't see her hand in front of her face, or her own body.

"Hello?!" She shrieked "What the hell is going on?!" She spread her arms out around her as far as she could, only to be met by thin air.

Alex put her hands to what she assumed was her face. It seemed like she was stuck in a...moment.

"And you can't get out of it." Alex sang. She laughed despite of herself. Oh, what was she doing, really? Doing here, in this strange place. It was like she was in limbo. Not like purgatory; she hadn't died. Not yet. She wasn't burning away her sins.

She wanted to go home. Home to her friends. Her second family. Her CID. Gene, Chris, Ray, Shaz, Viv even Luigi. She missed them all and it made her stomach ache from that bullet. _That must be proof that I was shot_. Alex thought._ It must be, it had to be real! I mean, if I can still feel it...Oh, please. Just let me go home!_

An eerie voice answered her as if replying, or just trying to infuriate and confuse her further.

_"Let me dance away"_

Alex shivered.

_"While I'm touching tomorrow, and I know who's there when silhouettes fall."_

"WHAT?!" Screamed Alex. She was sick of screaming. Both hearing it and doing it.

_"And I'm gone, like I'm dancing on angels."_

_"And I'm gone, through a crack in the past"_

Hands were wrapping around her elbows. She couldn't see them still, but she felt them.

"No, no! Get _off_ me!" She cried out. Alex was struggling against the iron grip of whatever was holding her. The hands were joined by more hands, grabbing her wrists, upper arms, elbows and shoulders. They were laughing at her. Her desperation.

A light appeared and a little girl was standing under it like it was a spotlight and she was taking centre stage.  
"Don't you want me anymore, mummy?" She asked solemnly. Alex remembered her daughter. Molly. She tried to tell her **yes**. All her memories of Molly were trickling away like holding water in cupped palms, melting from her mind. She forgot the time Molly took her first steps, the look of surprise on both their faces, Molly's first words, the first day at school waving goodbye as if it were forever to her mother, the first time she ever called her daughter Molly. Molly. And then, she forgot her daughters name. She knew it existed somewhere, but Alex couldn't find what she'd lost. Gone, like soldier in a never-ending battle.

The hands that were grasping her felt like they were cutting of all her power to fight, talk, think or breathe. They didn't even let her nod. The spotlight went out, only to flicker on again. It looked like a scene in 1982, familiar, yet so unfamiliar. She knew the people: her friends and co-workers from that time, even if they had not liked her. Or loved her. Alex knew where the scene was. CID. It was like watching the scene on television.

_Gene Hunt sat in his office. He suspected he had about five minutes before someone arrived in the now currently deserted CID office and found him there, hiding like the common scum he hunted. _

_"Shit! Shit shit SHIT!" He murmured to himself, kicking a nearby rubbish bin. He wondered how things had came to this. He had shot his own DI. He had shot his Alex. Bolly. He started to palm himself in the face. He knew what he would have to do. Run. Go on the lam. But that was the last thing he felt like doing. As hard as it was to admit it, he wanted to break down and cry. He wanted to surrender. But, no. He would run. He couldn't get locked up. That would be like betraying Alex. Gene lifted his head up. He could hear footsteps coming up the corridor. Slow and cautious. The hinges of the door squeaked._

_"Guv?" _

_It was Chris. He was walking nervously through the aisle of CID. They both met each others gaze. _

_"Guv." Chris whispered. Gene quickly got out of his chair and quickly marched over to the door. Chris stopped him._

_"Guv, we can help." He said._

_"'Think it's too late for that, Chris, don't you?" Gene replied, before taking his coat off the desk he had thrown it on. Alex's desk._

_"Wait! Don't go!"_

_Chris watched helplessly as his DCI left. He had no idea where he would go. But he wished him the best of luck. He knew he would never shoot Alex Drake. No, Chris knew. He put his hand to his head and felt like he was welling up, grieving for what he was sure would be the loss of DI Alex Drake and his DCI Gene Hunt._

Alex whimpered to herself. She was determind not cry. She tried to speak.  
"LET ME GO BACK!" She bellowed. It worked! She could talk! The hands that held her were melting away, one by one. They slid away like venomous snakes, letting her fall on the floor with a thud.

"Your wish is my command," a familiar voice whispered. Alex's eyes were being closed yet again, and she was sent to the floor one more time.


	3. Go Back Again

_A/N Ooh-hoo. Chapter Three. Here we go! I am preparing to get quite cruel to the readers in the next few chapters. Muahaha-ha! I am currently too tired to check for errors, so I'll have to trust good ol' spellchecker. I say good, it's actually quite bad. Meh. Rating may or -may not- move up soon. ;D_

**Chapter Three**

Arthur Layton was laughing at her.  
"Stupid woman," he was jeering "did you not even need us? I'll take _her_ off your hands." He winked from under the greasy strands of hair that fell across his left eye and chuckled.  
"Guess I'll see you around then, babe." And then he walked away from her. She didn't know where to. Retreating to the back of her mind, or walking away for ever. Alex Drake didn't care. She found that she usually had horrible dreams involving Arthur Layton in this messed-up world. She reached for her pillow.  
"Come here," she growled. _Growling at a pillow, Drake?_ She thought. _Yep, you've lost it. Mind you, never had "it"._ She assumed that the pillow had fallen off the side of the bed but woke up slightly when she realised that, instead of her springy 80's mattress, her hands were met by...straw?

It was hot. Very hot. And itchy. Something was itching Alex.  
"Gerroff me," she snorted into whatever she was lying on. All sorts of weird noises could be heard from her surroundings.

It is a curious thing, to wake up and not know where you are. Alex felt completely disorientated. She shot her eyes open, only to have them start to water by a blinding sun. It was very warm.  
"Oh god" Alex groaned. She felt as if she was going to be sick from the foul stench that she could smell. Despite this, there was the relaxing sound of water gushing. Like a small stream was nearby, happily moving along its business. Alex groped around her, trying to grab something to pull herself up, but could not see temporarily due to the blinding (and scorching) sun. Alex shrieked as she toppled off whatever it was she had been lying on and landed face-down on the ground, luckily managing to use her hands to stop herself, but still landing on the floor. She lay there for a bit, assuring herself that she looked like an idiot.  
"Ow," Alex croaked, realising how dry her throat was.

* * *

"Get up, you silly cow!" Someone was nudging her gently in her side with their foot. "Get up!"  
Alex struggled to get her legs to work so that she could stand properly. It was like they were tangled together. The first thing Alex noticed was her surroundings. A river to her right, rows and rows of houses to the left and she was stood on a bridge. A middle-aged woman stood there staring at her as if she had fallen out of the sky; leaning on the broom that was in her hand, hair scraped back and serious expression tattooed on her face.  
"What do you think you're doing, lying on the floor like a pillock? Haven't you 'eard what's been going on?" She had an annoying cockney accent, but her voice sounded slightly concerned. But that didn't really interest Alex. She couldn't remember anything. She couldn't remember what she had been doing last night, who had been lying next to her last night when she went to sleep. Alex was silent, as if she couldn't even remember how to talk.  
"Well, gonna say sumfin? And don't look at me like that." The woman scolded. Alex quickly averted to her surroundings once again. That river. It seemed so familiar. It made her smile. Alex was only a few steps away, so she wandered over to it, lifting her feet as if they each were lead weights. She looked in the river and gasped. The annoying woman began to talk again whilst Alex stared, bemused, at her own reflection.  
"I know. Bloody shocking, isn't it? How many is it now? About three murders right here, well around abouts here, in the last two weeks, I'd say. Mind you, they do a good job of coverin' up, don't they?"

Alex was still not taking anything she said in. She was too busy staring at the woman in the water. Her brown hair was waved all over. She seemed to be wearing a ridiculous turquoise-green velvet dress that just passed her knees. Oh my God, she thought.  
"I look like a cabbage patch doll." Alex whined to herself under her breath. She didn't have any shoes on, though. That was strange.  
"Well, I don't know. It's like anarchy. I blame Labour. Everything was fine as it was, if you ask me. Now there's people dying, people disappearing, people l-"  
"What year is it?" Alex interrupted seriously, watching the woman in the water's mouth match the movements of her own.  
"I beg your pardon, love?"  
"The year. What is it?"  
"Erm, it's 1997..?" The woman replied, glancing at her watch. Alex dropped the strand of hair that was in her hand.  
"What?" She demanded, her voice low and dangerous.  
"1997, love. Do you want me to take you home--hey!"  
The woman's broom was flung out of her hand as Alex pushed her out of the way and began to run. She shouted at Alex, yelling for her to come back and calm down. Her yells faded off into the distance soon enough.

* * *

Alex was running alongside the river, bare feet slapping against the hard concrete. She didn't know how far it went, or where she even was. She remembered about what her life had been like. It had been hectic, chaotic, busy and some parts had been sad, and lonely and horrible. But it had been _her _life. And no one had the choice to take that away from her. But they didn't choose to did they? Someone very close to her had shot her accidentally.  
"Gene." She whispered the name to herself. As soon as she said that name, the one that had anchored her to that time, she remembered all of them. Gene. Chris. Ray. Shaz. Viv. Everyone. Alex could see their faces. The thought kept her running, she didn't know how long for and she didn't know how long the river was. The only thing Alex didn't take into account was where the river led.

When she eventually ran out of both breath and adrenaline, Alex stopped running and tried to keep her breathing circular to soothe her tattered nerves. She had a stitch in her side and walked on alongside the relaxing river, clutching her side. She remembered what her old P.E. teacher used to tell Alex and her classmates from a young age.  
_**"You'll only get a stitch if you stop running!", **_the woman would shriek in a nasal voice. No mercy, that one. Alex closed her eyes and smiled. _Yes_, she acknowledged_. I have gone insane. I'm insane, but sane enough to know that I have actually gone insane. _She thought for a moment_. Hooray!_

Alex wasn't panicking much, to say she had just gone back eleven years in her past. Her life was very different eleven years ago. Or, at least, Alex thought it was. The little parts she could remember. It was like parts of her life in 1997 had been examined and chopped off like a butcher's knife chopping off pieces of unnecessary fat on a piece of meat before selling on his produce proudly. Like someone had decided that parts of her life in 1997 were poisonous and had to be removed.

"Is that why I'm here?" Alex demanded of herself "To re-live this part of my life so I don't make any mistakes this time around?"  
She waited for a moment.  
"Or to see _him_ again?" She whispered rhetorically, fearing what the answer may be. She was sure that she was just overreacting. Any little nudge of emotion would send her into hysterical laughter or into a complete breakdown. Or both.

* * *

Alex could hear footsteps behind her. Quite a distance away, but she felt like she needed to hide; or she maybe just wanted to. Taking cover by the side of a nearby bench that overlooked the water, she listened to the footsteps. They were slow and steady. Determined. They were headed in this direction. _You imbecile_, she told herself mentally. _You'll look insane if someone finds you sitting on the floor by a bench like a child playing Hide and Seek.  
"I thought you already __**were**__ insane?" _A familiar little voice asked her arrogantly. Alex scowled. _I know what I'll do_. She placed her foot on the bench heavily, as if tying her shoe laces. Alex then realised she had no shoes on her feet, never mind laces to tie. _Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger_, she was repeating to herself. Instead, Alex resorted to inspecting her foot, as if for a blemish of some sort. Now the footsteps were about level with hers, coming down the few little steps behind her. The person who was coming down the steps was sniffing to themselves, as if trying not to cry.

Alex heard a thump. Of something being dropped onto the floor. Then running footsteps. Her eyes widened and she made to run, finally realising at last what the old cockney woman had said about murders_. Murders! _But it was too late. Someone was grabbing her shoulders and turning her around to face them. Alex kept her eyes clenched shut.  
"OK! Don't murder me! _Please!_" She pleaded hysterically, half-sobbing. There were some things Alex felt she had to live for. The person grabbing her was laughing. Not out of malice, either.

"OH MY GOD!" They near enough shouted in her face. "I knew it! I'd recognise that arse anywhere!"

Alex wrenched her eyes open.

* * *

  
I know it's being silly, but I'm waiting for more reviews before I put up the next chapter. =D


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